Good Morning,
A thousand Hollywood names — directors, writers, actors — signed a letter opposing the proposed Paramount/Warner Bros. merger, warning it would mean fewer jobs, fewer opportunities, and less choice for audiences everywhere (The New York Times). Meanwhile, Canada is wrestling with whether its “Netflix tax” on streaming platforms is worth the fight with Washington (CBC), and Netflix and Apple are engaged in their own petty platform warfare (Vulture). The thread: everyone’s fighting over who controls the pipe, and nobody agrees what should flow through it.
It’s also Picasso day, apparently. A French charity is raffling off a Picasso portrait for €100 a ticket, proceeds to Alzheimer’s research (The Guardian). Meanwhile, Spain is locked in a national argument over whether Guernica should leave Madrid for Basque Country (El País). One Picasso you might win; the other, nobody wants to let go of.
Asha Bhosle, who recorded more than 12,000 Bollywood songs and forged a distinctive identity between Indian and Western music, has died at 92 (The Guardian). And Helen DeWitt turned down a $175,000 writing prize because she couldn’t handle the publicity obligations (The Guardian). Sometimes the cost of recognition is more than the check.
All of our stories below.
